As many of the tributes from across the footballing world made clear today, Sir Bobby Robson was one of the last remaining gentlemen in the game, an enduring reminder of a more decent age. Yet in many ways he was also the first football manager of the modern media era.

This was not only because he was a rare success abroad or because his tactics continually adapted to suit each new era, but because of his treatment at the hands of an ever more rapacious media. In his latter years Sir Bobby was recast as a national treasure, but during eight years as England manager he was the first to feel the unyielding, invasive pressure of an increasingly demanding press. In the 1980s that had its ugly side, as he became the first England manager to suffer so severely at the hands of a tabloid press that had begun to devote ever more space to sport in general and football in particular.

The Sun was handing out badges demanding that Robson be sacked as early as 1984, but it was in the period following a disappointing European Championship in 1988 that the newspaper campaign to oust him became most heated. This was the Sun in its buccaneering, "super soaraway", Kelvin MacKenzie pomp, when circulation was soaring, libel writs were waved away as an occupational hazard and it delighted in its self-made image as the pulse of the man on the street. With the same tenacity and self-righteous fury that would in time be extended to most of those in the public eye, it contrived that the job of England manager should become a vessel for the perceived frustrations of a nation.

The other tabloids followed suit and in the run-up to the 1990 World Cup, despite England successfully negotiating the qualifying phase, the banner headlines calling for Robson to be sacked following a draw in a friendly with Saudi Arabia (including the infamous "In the Name of Allah, Go") reached fever pitch.

The FA's then secretary, Graham Kelly, later recalled how each attack only redoubled the FA's determination to stand behind its man. Typically, when the association finally cracked, it was with inexpert timing. "The irony was that just before the 1990 World Cup, the chairman, Bert Millichip finally lost patience, let his tongue run away with him, and said Robson either had to win the World Cup or go, and Bobby reacted by approaching PSV Eindhoven. Had this not happened, he would have served another four years, believe me," Kelly later said.

Even the announcement that he would leave after the 1990 World Cup was not enough for some columnists, who accused Robson of being unpatriotic for lining up a job abroad. It was during the Robson era that the England manager's role started being referred to as "the impossible job", and with good reason. But bar the odd flash of anger, Robson refused to let the press or the pressures of the job get to him.

However, the seeds of Taylor the turnip, Hoddle's self-inflicted downfall, Sven's many misadventures and the vilification of the "wally with the brolly" were sown. It ignited a debate that has rumbled ever since about the extent to which the press should back or barrack the man in the job.

All was, inevitably, forgiven in the wake of the Turin heartbeak as that open-top bus, Gazza's comedy breasts and all, made its way from Luton airport surrounded by thousands of adoring fans. Inevitably, the media alighted on English football's new era and its new clown prince with delight.

Ironically, it was England's epic 1990 World Cup run, soundtracked by New Order and Nessun Dorma, that together with the stadium revolution that followed the Taylor report in the wake of Hillsborough, and a new respectability for which Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch became useful shorthand, ushered in the money-spinning Premier League era. In turn, that kick-started a further expansion in the number of pages, supplements and TV hours devoted to a sport that was no longer just a circulation driver but a branch of the entertainment industry.

It was a world that Robson sometimes struggled to accept but throughout it all he maintained a perspective that sometimes deserts many in the game, his tormentors in the press during the 1980s among them. "I once had to keep my dignity in front of the world's media having been robbed of a place in the 1986 World Cup semi-finals by a blatant handball by Diego Maradona. I was angry, I was upset, I felt my whole world had caved in," he wrote earlier this year. "But I also understood the bigger picture, that you have to accept that things can go against you in sport, however high the stakes."